They have therefore no such
thing as bastards where polygamy is permitted; this disgrace is known
only in countries in which a man is allowed to marry but one wife. Here
they were obliged to stamp a mark of infamy upon concubinage, and
consequently they were under a necessity of stigmatising the issue of
such unlawful conjunctions.
In republics, where it is necessary that there should be the purest
morals, bastards ought to be more degraded than in monarchies.
The laws made against them at Rome were perhaps too severe; but as
the ancient institutions laid all the citizens under a necessity of
marrying, and as marriages were also softened by the permission to
repudiate or make a divorce, nothing but an extreme corruption of
manners could lead them to concubinage.
It is observable that as the quality of a citizen was a very
considerable thing in a democratic government, where it carried with it
the sovereign power, they frequently made laws in respect to the state
of bastards, which had less relation to the thing itself and to the
honesty of marriage than to the particular constitution of the republic.
Thus the people have sometimes admitted bastards into the number of
citizens, in order to increase their power in opposition to the
great.
[8]
Thus the Athenians excluded bastards from the privilege of
being citizens, that they might possess a greater share of the corn sent
them by the King of Egypt. In fine, Aristotle informs us that in many
cities where there was not a sufficient number of citizens, their
bastards succeeded to their possessions; and that when there was a
proper number, they did not inherit.
[9]
